How To Inherit The Earth

What does God mean when He says, "the meek shall inherit the Earth?" Why is trusting in God the key to true happiness.


Scripture: Psalm 37:9, Ephesians 3:20, Matthew 5:5

Transcript

Alright, thank you very much and hello again, radio friends. How in the world are you? Doing alright? Thank God we can be in the world and not of it, and that, of course, is the background of the little greeting that comes to you each day as you and I get together around the Word of God. We are in the 37th Psalm. We are just taking a Psalm or two for a break in between book studies, and we were looking at verse 9, “Cease from anger and forsake wrath” because it just burns you up and leaves scar tissue in others. He says in verse 9, “Because evil doers should be cut off. But those that wait upon the Lord shall inherit the earth.” God’s way works. Don’t let the skeptics of the world sneer and cause you to back off from waiting upon God. Now, this is hard to do in the world of practicality. Here’s a situation: Your job situation is coming to an end. Maybe there has been some kind of a reshuffling in the corporate structure, a corporate takeover; maybe there is a new boss, and you and the new boss don’t seem to see eye to eye in the way to do things.

In any case, they say to you, “We won’t throw you out into the street, but I want you to go looking for another job so that you can find a place where your talents are better suited than they are here.” You know that within a month or two this is it. Now, you start praying, “Lord, where do I go, what am I going to do?” You start looking around. You send your resumes around and nothing seems to happen. The weeks go by and it is getting closer and closer to D-Day, and nothing is happening and you feel the panic rising within you. And then you pray, “Oh, God, hurry up!” Have you been through that? Oh yeah, that is no fun, I tell you.

He says, “They that wait on the Lord…” because God is never late. He has something for you. He may have for you the experience of coming to the end of that particular corporate railroad track and actually waking up one morning and not going to work, but getting down on your knees and saying, “Oh God, I am going to trust you now. Yesterday was the last day at work. I cleaned out my desk. Here I am home and I don’t have a job. Oh, God, what are you going to do now?” And you cry out to Him and if you wait there on your knees for awhile, you will hear the blessed Spirit of God speaking within you, a word of peace and confidence. “The Lord is my shepherd. He leadeth me.” And you will find that God has something for you that is just beyond anything you could ever, ever imagine. “He is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us.” That is Ephesians 3:20, isn’t it? So what He is saying, “They that wait on the Lord shall inherit the earth.” God has plans for you. Known unto God are all His works from the beginning of the world. In all our ways “acknowledge Him, and He shall direct Thy paths.” “The steps of a good man or ordered of the Lord, and He delighteth in His way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand.” The divine hand is holding you today, beloved.

Now, if someone I am talking to is going through that painful job transition situation and nothing has turned out and all your resumes seemed not to have produced any job offers, and you have the bleak outlook of being out of work, it is a panicky feeling because there is the wife, the kids, the house and the mortgage and the car payments and all the rest. What is going to happen to us? Are we going to lose it all? Oh, how that just rises up in your heart, doesn’t it? Now, this is the time for you to do two things. He says in a previous verse, verse 3, “Trust in the Lord and do good. So shalt thou dwell in the land and verily thou shalt be fed.” First pray, then act. Get down on your knees and commit things to God and wait on God until your heart is quiet before Him. Don’t make the mistake of rushing out into the day when your heart is still fussed and upset. You will have some rough spots to go through if you do it that way. Stay in the presence of the Lord until your heart is quiet before Him and you have yielded yourself to Him, no matter what, the hallelujah factor has come in.

Then, he said, “Do good.” That is to say, do what you know to do. Get on the phone, knock on some doors, do what you know you ought to do. Do the simple tasks like carrying out the garbage. If you sit around and mope, nothing happens. Nothing goes on but the rent, as the saying is. Do what you know you ought to do while trusting God actively and see the miracle of God’s guidance and provision in your life. This is solid good sense as well as being scriptural and divinely inspired. God is always a sensible God. He says, “Turn things over to Me by faith and then do what I tell you to do.” Now, that is always the way He worked. Naaman the Syrian, who had leprosy, came to the Prophet and said, “I have been told that your God can heal.” The Prophet said, “Go wash in the river Jordan. Dip yourself seven times.” And the Syrian listened to the wise counsel of the person who was courageous enough to say, “Listen, if he told you to do something hard, you would have done it. Why don’t you do this, it’s easy.” And he went down and it said he came back healed.

Our Lord Jesus looked at a blind man one day. He made some homemade clay out of dust and saliva and put it upon the eyelids of the man and said, “Go wash that off in the pool of Salome.” Now, our Lord Jesus could have healed the man with a word. You know that. As a matter of fact, He did heal with His Word. He just simply spoke healing to people at different times, but in this occasion, He said, “You go wash that off.” The man went therefore and washed and came back seeing. The point I’ve lived by for many years is this: First, yield yourself to God absolutely in the overall aspects of your life and your situation. Stay in His presence until your heart is at rest and you have yielded yourself to Him, and you know you have. Then, do what God whispers to you in your heart to do. It may be something very simple. It may be something important-looking. But in any case, He says, “Trust in the Lord.” That means turns things over to Him and then do what He tells you to do. “Ye are my friends,” Jesus said, “if you do whatsoever I command you.” Faith is not a matter of sitting around and singing yourself into sanctified senility. Faith is committing the present situation to God and then doing what He tells you to do. Oh, let that sink into your heart and life enough so that you put it to work this very day, will you?

“Evil doers shall be cut off, but those that wait upon the Lord, they shall inherit the earth.” Now that word “cut off” means that you won’t be able to find them. They will be gone. Troubles will vanish. “Yet a little while the wicked shall not be. Yea, thou shalt diligently consider its price, and it shall not be. But the meek shall inherit the earth and delight themselves in the abundance of peace.” What He is saying is: The only way to forget troubles is to wait on God so that He can move them out of the way. The only way to get rid of the problems of life is not to fight them and carry them around until they become part of the furniture of your soul, but turn them over to the Lord so that He can move them out. He said, “cut down”, verse 2. Troubles can be made ineffective as you trust your Lord. Then, He says, “cut off”, verse 9. He is going to move them out of the way.

The trouble with troubles is that they stick in your heart and mind and they become part of the furniture of your soul, and you keep stumbling over them. And the way to get rid of that is not to fight it. The more you fight an idea the more you pile it into your unconscious mind. Isn’t it true? You say, “I won’t think about that.” Well, what happens? You end up thinking about it. So, the only way to fight unpleasant and evil and wrong things in your life is to yield them to your blessed Lord, so that He can move them out of the way. And while your memory may still dredge up some things that may be painful, as God has dealt with them, the sting has gone out of them and you are able to handle them. The psychologist says that you can hold them at arm’s length so they don’t threaten you. You can look at them at arm’s length and they don’t threaten you anymore. That is what happens as I see it as a result of this passage. Evil doers shall be cut off. God is going to move these things out of your way so that they don’t constitute something over which you stumble constantly. “Thou shalt diligently consider his place and it shall not be.”

Here is something delightful, when God has settled something in my heart and, little-boy- like, I think, “Oh, I’ll think about that again.” It is impossible to focus upon it as I once did. When God has settled something in your heart, you can’t even find it to worry about it again. This is the miracle of the indwelling Holy Spirit in the believer’s heart. When God settles something in your heart, you may have a memory about it, but it no longer threatens you and you can’t really find it to focus upon it and worry about it again; it is settled. What a beautiful, wonderful truth that is.

Well, He says, “but the meek shall inherit the earth.” Now, didn’t our Lord Jesus use that same expression in what we call the beatitudes in the book of Matthew? “Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs in the kingdom of God. Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek (Matthew 5:5) for they shall inherit the earth. What does He mean by this? Well, ultimately, you and I are going to reign with the Lord Jesus Christ and in that case, we could be said to inherit the new heavens and the new earth. But for the here and now, only the person who is trusting God absolutely is in control of the situation and inherits the enjoyment of this place we call the earth. The only way to be in control of your environment is to be controlled by almighty God. We will talk about that the next time we get together.

Father God, today help us to put the situation in Thy control and thus be at peace. In Jesus name I pray. Amen.

Till I meet you once again by way of radio, walk with the King today and be a blessing!



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